A Most Powerful Adversary

The following is a review of the second season of The Leftovers – Created by Damon Lindelof & Tom Perotta

After a terrific and underrated first season, the writers of The Leftovers decided to open their second season with a change of scenery. First, a supremely odd prologue that had me scratching my head and made me wonder if I was watching a different show. It’s a sequence that manages to foreshadow a lot of the events of the second season, but it was an odd way to open a season nonetheless.

Then, after the prologue ended, Axis Mundi – the first episode of the season – becomes a point of view-episode from the perspective of a family from Jarden, Texas — a town that lost zero people during the ‘Sudden Departure.’ We soon learn that these people are Kevin (played by Justin Theroux), Nora (played by Carrie Coon), and Jill’s (played by Margaret Qualley) new neighbors. (more…)